In recent years, advances in digital technology have given rise to a form of narrative expression known as digital storytelling. Although similar in many respects to traditional oral/written storytelling, digital storytelling makes use of digital media, rather than simply the spoken or printed word, to convey a story (i.e., narrative) to an audience. By leveraging the capabilities of digital media and their underlying technology platforms, digital storytelling can provide a user experience that is more interactive and immersive than traditional storytelling approaches.
As the types of digital media made available to users has grown, it has become increasingly common for content creators involved in digital storytelling to produce “hybrid-media” narratives—in other words, stories that are conveyed via a multitude of different media, rather than via a single medium. Since these hybrid-media narratives can engage users from multiple touchpoints, they have the potential to further increase user exposure to, and immersion in, the narrative content.
Unfortunately, existing approaches for implementing a hybrid-media narrative are limited in the sense that they do not provide a mechanism for user consumption of, or interaction with, the narrative in the context of one medium to affect the presentation of that narrative to the user in another medium. Thus, while the narrative can be consumed via different media, the user experience with respect to each medium is essentially a “silo-ed” (i.e., separate and isolated) experience.